Mike Gillespie, snow survey supervisor for the National Resources Conservation Service, Hydraulic technician Mike Ardison, middle, and Soil scientist BJ Shoup, right, head into the Berthoud Summit site on skis and snowshoes to take their annual measurements. Mike Gillespie, Snow Survey Supervisor with the National Resources Conservation Service, made his annual trek out to the Berthoud Summit site to measure the yearly snow thus far. This will be the first measurement for 2012 year.

BERTHOUD PASS — Colorado’s snowpack — one of the most important sources of water for states in the American West — is lagging significantly below normal, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The first manual snow sampling of the season Thursday confirmed what automated sensors have been suggesting for weeks: that the water available in Colorado’s snowpack is about a quarter below average.

Statewide, snowpack is 73 percent of normal. That ranks as the fourth-driest measurement in the last 30 years, according to the conservation service.

No year in the last three decades that has started this far below average has recovered to record normal snowpack by the start of spring, said Mike Gillespie, the snow survey supervisor for the service.

“It’s pretty evident that this is one of the drier years,” Gillespie said. “It’s not looking like a good start at all to the year.”

Gillespie led the first manual snow survey of the season Thursday on Berthoud Pass.

Snow depths measured in the teens and 20s of inches, with an average water content of 6.3 inches. That is 76 percent of average and barely more than half as much as the 10.5 inches of water content in the snow at the same spot at the same time last year.

As Gillespie measured the snowpack along a pre-set course several hundred yards off U.S. 40, sapling trees and fallen logs poked above the snow line.

“A lot of times, it’s a difficult struggle just to get up the bank from the highway,” Gillespie said. “And this year we had no problem.”

According to sensor data, no river basin in Colorado has average or above average snowpack this season.

The Upper Rio Grande basin, in southern Colorado, is doing the best, with 95 percent-of-average snowpack. The Colorado and the Yampa and White river basins are the lowest, with 63 percent of average. The South Platte basin, which includes the Front Range west of Denver, is at 84 percent of average.

The snowpack measurements are closely watched by Colorado water managers, who use them to determine how much water will be available in the spring and summer. Gillespie said one bright note this year is that last season’s glut of snow kept reservoirs full throughout the summer and fall — providing water suppliers with extra cushion for a dry year.

More in News

President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said Saturday there was “incontrovertible” evidence of a Russian plot to disrupt the 2016 U.S. election, a blunt statement that shows how significantly the new criminal charges leveled by an American investigator have upended the political debate over his inquiry.

The University of Colorado leadership is grappling with how to address a nationwide nosedive in the favorability of higher education — particularly, among conservatives — as CU’s own representatives and decision-makers disagree on what’s behind the downturn.